Should we worry about that?
Well, we all posted our games here on Itch and submitted to an Itch Game Jam, so IF something like that would happen, maybe the guys from the site could help us out? I know that the jams and creators are independent and the Itch staff has little to do with what shenanigans people might do here, but I think having the history of who posted the games and when they were posted could prove helpful in dire situations... I mean, yes they could release games that are something like ours, just as our games probably have a lot in common with other games, and that could happen without any consequences. But if they publish any of our games just as how they are right now, I don't think they could get away with it - our games are released on our own Itch pages, they are our "products". Well, I know little about this kind of stuff, but I'm sure we could do something about that, if that happens.
And yes, I know this is just speculation, I just find it unrespectful, or at least strange, that the publisher has remained silent for so long - no "hurry ups" when the deadline was coming, no "thank yous" when the jam was over and everyone posted their games, no "hold ons" when the results should have been revealed, and no "sorries" now that we are confused about what is going on. Maybe they even forgot about the jam they created?
It's possible they are taking longer to judge it; They have a closed facebook game testing group and posted a poll on September 13th:
"We've got a bunch of awesome projects to test out at the moment which we'll be sending out over the next few months. Vote below for which ones you'd like to be involved with!"
I won't say what the options were in case they kept that private for a reason, but there were no names (Just stuff like "Dungeon Crawler Deck Builder" etc. - not actually posted but I don't want to accidentally get people's hopes up). On the other hand that was on the 13th; I signed up to test a game and haven't heard anything since. They might also be running into tricky times?
AFAIK board game copyright only applies to components if they have original art, but I'm no expert. However I doubt ITB would steal these ideas; for one thing they're a small company and accusations of plagiarism on BGG (board game geek), with proof on Itch.io could be disastrous for them. They also seem like nice people.
Full Disclosure; I did design a game for them called "Quickdraw" almost 2 years ago, so I have had prior contact with them. Its not on their released games as the kickstarter didn't go so well (but they've done "Sub Terra" since)